This invention is directed to the hotel and motel industry and having as objective, providing of a more expeditious means of maintaining an instantly available and accurate monitoring of the status of any number of the rooms in the particular establishment. The general practice and procedure in hotels, and by the term hotels it is intended to include motels or other types of room rental businesses and establishments, for monitoring of the status of a room as to being occupied, unoccupied or in a state of cleaning, has been effected through the means of personal communication between the housekeeper and the desk clerk and may include telephone communications. This personal communication also necessarily involves the communication as between the several personnel of the housekeeping staff and thus the systems, as heretofore employed necessarily resulted in a substantialy delay and often inaccurate representation to the desk clerk as to the availability or the status of any particular room.
Additionally, the controls afforded the desk clerk over any of the rooms, have been limited to dispatching of a person to personally check the status of the room and to control the operation of equipment that may be placed in that room. Specifically, the equipment of substantial concern includes the heating and cooling equipment as well as the lights and other large electrical power consuming apparatus such as the television set. Again, this personal checking necessitated a substantial delay in obtaining the information and consequent inaccuracy of that information. It is quite clear that once a person departed the room after checking on the status, the status of the room could subsequently change without knowledge of the desk clerk or housekeeper and this could result in embarrassment to the desk clerk as to the availability or nonavailability of a particular room. Also, the prior personal checking systems enabled persons to continue occupancy of a room undetected by the desk clerk and thus deprive the hotel of earned revenue as well as continued expenditure of money for the electrical power requirements for the operation for that room.
An important aspect of hotel operation is the economic utilization of resources. One very important factor and element of such resources and economics is the utilization of electrical power. Most equipment in modern hotels is now opearated by electrical power and this includes equipment such as the heating and cooling equipment. Most hotels are now constructed to have individual heating and cooling units for each room and these are necessarily controlled at that room. Consequently, the conservation of electrical power requires turning off all unused apparatus, such as the lights and television sets that are normally included in a hotel room. Guests very frequently leave the room with the heating or cooling equipment operating as well as numerous lights and often leave the television set operating. Thus, it will be readily apparent that the continued operation of these devices in the absence of a registered occupant represents an unnecessary waste and material cost factor to the hotel operator in the economics of hotel management. That the use of electrical power when a room is not occupied by a registered guest represents a substantial cost will be clearly apparent when it is noted that the occupancy time in normal one day stay represents only about one half day. This continued use of electrical power as for unnecessary heating or cooling is a very significant cost factor.
Also, as indicated, control over the room and monitoring of its status as well as its occupancy is a matter of substantial concern and is necessary for obtaining of proper revenue from hotel operation. Many times occupants have a tendency to return to a room for continued occupancy for a short period of time beyond that of the specified checkout time. This characteristic has resulted in embarrasement at times to the desk clerk for the subsequent assignment of such a room to other registered occupants. The difficulty is that the new occupants upon arrival at the room find that it is already occupied and become extremely concerned that the desk clerk has made a mistake when in fact the desk clerk has the proper information that the room should be unoccupied. The difficulty of the personal communication system, as previously described, is that the desk clerk is unable by any reasonably economic means, to assure himself that the room is in the indicated unoccupied state, which indication is based on the fact that the guest had checked out at the registration desk.
Furthermore, the personal communication system that has been necessitated by previous management procedures is slow and is an inaccurate reporting system between the housekeeper and the desk clerk. One disadvantage is that the desk clerk is unable to rapidly communicate to the housekeeping station that a particular room has now arrived at an unoccupied status and is thus requiring the complete cleaning and readiness for a subsequent registered occupant. A second disadvantage is that the housekeeper, upon the maids having completed the assigned duties of cleaning and readying the room, is unable to readily communicate this fact to the desk clerk as the maids require a certain amount of time to advise the housekeeper and then there is further delay in relay and transfer of information to the desk clerk.